Teaching kids the truth about ag is vital to our future

As Queensland’s second largest agricultural export, sugarcane plays an important role in this economic growth, contributing around $4 billion to the economy annually and supporting almost 20,000 jobs, both directly and indirectly.

Unsurprisingly for such an important sector of the economy, there is a wealth of opportunities for pursuing a career in the ag space – everything from farm hands and truck drivers to mill workers, mechanics, engineers, economists, scientists, commodity traders and plant pathologists.

However, despite this, you might be hard pressed to find a school, even in the heart of Queensland’s cane-growing regions, that teaches students about the sugarcane industry.

As the curriculum requirements have expanded and demands on teachers broadened, there appears to be less space covering traditional industries like agriculture.

Go to a metropolitan school and the students may not even know a sugarcane industry exists, despite it featuring on the Queensland coat of arms.

CANEGROWERS plans to change that!

Over the past few years, we’ve been working with education professionals, teacher and curriculum experts, and our colleagues at the Primary Industries Education Foundation Australia to develop a range of curriculum-aligned teaching resources for primary and secondary schools.

These resources will give teachers everything they need to educate students about one of the nation’s most important agricultural export industries, an industry that dominates 2000km of Australian coastline.

Called Sugarcane: One Plant, Many Products, the resources aim to teach students about the entire sugarcane supply chain, from growing cane right through to harvesting, processing, refining, packing, exporting, and everything in between.

They will also cover the opportunities developing in the industry with the emergence of Australia’s bioeconomy. Opportunities like green electricity, bioplastics, and biofuels, especially Sustainable Aviation Fuel.

These are the first curriculum-aligned teaching resources ever produced by the industry and will be vital for increasing awareness and knowledge amongst teachers, parents and students about what our great industry has to offer.

Workforce shortages are an enduring problem for the entire ag sector. We won’t fix that by letting students get their information about our ag industries from the news, which generally only reports on negative developments.

We have a great sector, which is vital for providing food and fibre to every Aussie family and does a lot of heavy lifting in the Australian economy.

Increasingly we have an inspiring story to tell about our environmental and sustainability credentials, and about the wonderful innovations and evolutions underway in the sector.

It’s vital we share that story with the workforce and decision-makers of tomorrow, and that’s why CANEGROWERS is starting to educate kids today.